


look through your textbook (cause i'm history)

by Chocchi



Series: Feeling Pretty Good About the Trouble That I'm In [1]
Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Meetings, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Mostly Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23789482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chocchi/pseuds/Chocchi
Summary: After dropping out, Yuri's life is a haze of working and trying not to lose his damn mind.Then he meets Estelle.
Relationships: Estellise Sidos Heurassein & Yuri Lowell, Yuri Lowell/Flynn Scifo
Series: Feeling Pretty Good About the Trouble That I'm In [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1421275
Comments: 11
Kudos: 77





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> real yuri adopting estelle as his little sister on sight hours, who up smash that mf like  
> as ever, effusive thanks to my friend [jude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolishguniw/profile) for their thoughtful assistance beta-reading this!  
> comments, concrit and kudos are fuel for my writing engine >:0 !!

It’s late—too late, the community center isn’t supposed to be open at this hour—and there’s a crying young woman with blood on her face holding Yuri’s hand in both of her own.

Yuri really wishes he could say it’s the first and last time this will happen to him. Unfortunately, it’s neither.

“P-please,” the woman stammers. Tears streak down her cheeks, right through the abrasion that mars her cheekbone. Ouch. That must sting. “Please, I just—I can c-clean myself up, I just need a—a first aid kit and, and a place to spend the night—“

“This is a community center, not a shelter,” Yuri says, as gently as he can to soften the blow. Her lower lip trembles. “Hey, none of that. I can help with getting you cleaned up, and when you calm down a little bit we can think together about where to put you up for the night. Alright?”

“Th-thank you so much—“

Yuri waves his free hand dismissively. He fishes through his pockets for his keys so he can unlock the front door.

“Ladies first,” he says, using his captive hand to guide her inside. She sniffles valiantly, releasing his hand and inching inside the dark building. Yuri steps in after her, locking the door behind himself, and flicks on the lights. She flinches away from the sudden glare. “Shit, sorry.”

“It’s n-not your fault.”

“The first aid kit is in the staff room. If you want, you can wait right here—”

“I’m sorry, I d-don’t want to be alone, s-sorry—“

“Hey, you’re fine, that’s cool. Come on, then.”

They troop through the main community room. Yuri kicks in chairs that didn’t get pushed all the way back to their tables at the end of the day. That’s what Hanks gets for letting Ted help close up for the night. At least the kiddie zone got picked up so they won’t slip on any errant toy trains. The young woman flinches with every creaky floorboard and groaning pipe. Poor lady. This isn’t exactly a new building. There’s a lot of those noises.

Yuri unlocks the staff room, and this time has the presence of mind to warn her, “Lights going on.”

“Thank you....”

“So what I need you to do for me is to sit down and try to keep your hair back while I patch you up. Sound good?”

“You don’t—don’t have to—“

“Yeah, but I’m gonna, so quit trying to tell me what to do. Hair back.”

She obediently sinks into one of the shitty folding chairs Hanks keeps in the staff room. Shaking fingers hold her pink hair away from her face. Yuri sits down on an adjacent chair and tries to touch the abrasion as little as possible while he moves away some stray strands that she missed. She trembles, but doesn’t make a peep.

“Okay, what I’ve got here is hydrogen peroxide—“ He shows her the bottle. “And I’m just gonna pour some onto these cotton pads and wipe your scrapes down with it. It’ll sting like a motherfucker, but then it’ll be over with.”

“O-okay.”

“Chin up. You got this.” He holds her face steady while he makes the first pass. She still jerks back so hard that he almost gets her in the eye with the soaked cotton pad. “Whoa there.”

“I’m s-so sorry—!”

“Shit happens. Ready for the next try?”

“Ye-yes....”

Her jaw clenches under his fingers. She whimpers a little when the pad touches her cheek, but doesn’t move. What a trooper.

“There you go. One more pass, okay? We don’t want shit stuck in there when it heals up.”

She nods, firmly, and barely winces with the last pass. Yuri tosses the bloody cotton into the trash and reaches back into the first aid kit.

“Any other scrapes?”

“My—my knuckles.”

“Oh yeah? Let’s see ‘em.” Yuri swipes them down with one pass. They’re not nearly as bad as her face. “You know Neosporin?”

“N-no.”

“Really? Damn. Well, it’s just antibiotic goop. Shouldn’t hurt as much as the last stuff.” She watches as he spreads some onto a gauze pad.“I’m gonna tape this to your face. Little weird having tape on your face, but in my personal experience, better than having an open bloody wound.”

“Y-yuck.”

“That’s the spirit.” He carefully tapes the gauze in place. Luckily, the scrape isn’t too big. Plenty of room to put the tape down without catching her eyelashes or the hair framing her face. He pops open a box of finger bandages and goops up a few to patch over the worst of her knuckles. “All set. We have some pain meds here, too. Want any? I got ibuprofen, naproxen, Tylenol...”

“Can I... ibuprofen.”

“All yours.” Yuri slides her the bottle and rises from his chair to search the cabinets. Where’s the goddamn cups? Oh, hell, that’s right. Hanks moved all of the cups to the kitchen. There’s only mugs in the staff room now. He grabs a “#1 GRANDPA” mug. “Lemme get you some water for that.”

He passes it off to her. She slips a pill into her mouth and drinks it down. Both hands lock around the mug when she lowers it, and she stares down into the leftover water, trembling.

“You cold?”

“H-huh? Oh. Um. A little.”

Yuri opens and closes a few more cabinet doors before he finds Hanks’s old high school letterman jacket neatly folded and stashed. Evidently the blankets they used to keep in here have been relocated, too. “We’ve got this. Might smell a little like mothballs, though.”

“That’s—that’s fine.”

Yuri drapes the jacket over her shoulders. She hunkers down under it without putting her arms through the sleeves.

“Do you want, like. Tea? We got tea, I think. In the kitchen. Not sure what kinds. I’m not really a tea person. I’m a heathen, I drink black coffee because chugging bitter sludge makes me feel like a badass.” She makes a hiccupping noise that’s something like a laugh. “There we go. Feeling a little better?”

“Yes. Thank you—so much. Really.”

“Well, I couldn’t just leave you there.” He scratches at his chin. “I’m gonna need you to get a head start on thinking about where to spend the night. I have to remember why I came here in the first place.”

“Oh, no, I’m s—“

“Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.” What _did_ he come here for? He tips his head back, staring at the ceiling. He was home for the evening... bartending ended early tonight... he had already walked Repede... oh, shit. That’s right. “I’m going into the kitchen anyway, so seriously, do you want tea?”

“N-no, thank you.”

“Okay, your call.”

She still scrambles to her feet and follows him, so close that he keeps waiting for her to step on his heels. He’s not gonna be the jackass that tells her off, though.

“I just want to preface this by saying I’m an amateur chef, not a serial killer, and you can hold onto the knife until we go our separate ways if me having it freaks you out,” Yuri tells her, as he turns on the kitchen light. She gives him a horrified look, mouthing _knife?_ He goes to the sink. The meat cleaver is exactly where he thought it would be. He can always trust Hanks and Ted to leave his good knives someplace where they rust and get covered in gross shit. He grabs a scrubber sponge and wipes it down, one side then the other, before drying it and bundling it into a dish cloth.

He offers the bundle to the young lady. She shakes her head, quickly. The mug is still tightly clasped in both hands.

“Why is y-your knife here?”

“I lent it to them,” Yuri says. “To the staff here, I mean. Well, I’m also staff, sometimes, but that’s not the point. They had a few whole chickens to prepare today, and someone made off with their old cleaver a couple weeks ago.”

“That was. Nice of you.”

“Sure, I guess.” Yuri tucks the knife bundle under one arm and leans back against the counter, considering her. Her hair is pulled back with an ornate clasp, aside from the bangs that drape over her abraded cheek. Under Hanks’s jacket, she’s wearing a fancy dress, something sleek and silky and blue that pools around her feet. It is, predictably, covered in  dirt, dead leaves and grass stains up to knee-height. Her face is wan, with big, sad green eyes. A bruise is starting to mottle her cheek around the scrape. The very image of an abused socialite. “Can I get your name?”

“I’m...I’m Estellise.”

Yuri whistles. “That’s a mouthful.”

“I g-guess so.”

“How do you feel about ‘Estelle’?”

“Es...Estelle?” She perks up a bit. The moue of her lips twitches up just a little. “That’s nice. I like that.”

“Alright, sweet. So, Estelle. I’m Yuri. Do you want to tell me how you ended up here at one in the morning with your face all banged up?”

Estelle looks back down into the mug. “...Do I have to?”

“Nah.”

“Wha—I don’t?”

“Nope. It’s not really my business. I mean, I can make some pretty educated guesses, but you don’t technically need to tell me anything.”

“O-oh.”

“I can just straight-up ask what I really need to. You want me to take you to a domestic abuse women’s shelter?”

“I—“ The mug shakes in her hands. “I d-don’t count.”

“You don’t count?”

“It’s n-not like that. I c-couldn’t—I couldn’t take that space from someone who really n-needed it.”

Yuri sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Uh... I guess you would know your situation better than I would. How about... no offense, but I have no idea how old you are. Are you a very fancy teenager? Should I be thinking more along the lines of children’s shelters?”

“No. I’m eighteen.”

“God, you are a fancy teenager.”

She laughs a little, but it’s hysterical. “Y-yes.”

“I guess... shit. I’m just stuck on women’s shelters. You really don’t want to go? You sure? I can find a lady to drive you if you aren’t comfortable with—“

“N-no! It’s not you. Y-you’re fine.”

“Do you want...did you come here to find Hanks? I can call Hanks.”

“Who’s H-Hanks?”

“Oookay, that answers that question... Not gonna lie, I’m kind of confused about what you want.”

Estelle makes a miserable noise. “I am too.”

Yuri takes a hard look at her. The scrape on her face isn’t so bad she’s bleeding through the gauze right away, and her hands aren’t fucked up too badly. Definitely not a hospital situation. Poor girl probably  doesn’t have the money on her to deal with the hospital right now, anyway.  The way she’s acting, he’s pretty damn sure there’s some kind of abuse at play, but she doesn’t want to go to the women’s shelter. She’s too old for programs targeted at children. So what exactly is Yuri supposed to do with her?

...Fuck it. He’s tired, she’s tired, he’s overdue for his next scruffy stray. “Look, if you’re comfortable with it, you can come to my place for the night. I’ve got a one-bedroom, not a studio, so you can take the bedroom and lock me out if that makes you feel safer. I can sleep on the couch.”

“I c-couldn’t—!”

“Sure you could. I’ve slept on the couch for stupider reasons.”

“But—“

“If you’re scared, we can call somebody you trust and tell them where you are, so you’ve got witnesses if I decide to murder you.”

“I don’t think you’re going to murder me,” she says, scrunching up her nose at him and then wincing when it pulls at her cheek. “I don’t want to impose.”

“Okay, but I don’t care,” Yuri says. “So I don’t think it really counts as imposing. I’m going to text Hanks—he’s the director of the community center, by the way—that I have a very sad young lady staying at my apartment tonight, so that the next time you ask a total stranger for shelter, you think of that and remember to have some degree of self-preservation.”

“Y-you don’t have to—“

“Yeah, yeah. Oh, minor detail—are you allergic to dogs?”

As it turns out, Estelle is not allergic to dogs, but it’s possible that dogs are allergic to her.

“He’s like that sometimes,” Yuri says, absentmindedly, while Repede staunchly ignores Estelle’s attempts to make friends with him.

“He isn’t friendly?”

When Yuri glances over his shoulder, she’s staring back at him with sad, disappointed eyes. She kneels beside Repede on the floor, bundled into spare clothes Yuri dug out of the community center’s storage for her. Wearing second-hand clothes, making undignified kissy noises at his dog, she looks much younger than she did at the community center. The pouty face she’s making at Repede probably isn’t doing her any favors in the maturity department either.

“He’s not so hot about strangers. Seriously, don’t take it personally.” He gives the chicken soup one last stir. Cooking at 2AM isn’t his favorite, but it is, unfortunately, a frequent occurrence nonetheless. “Alright, there’s soup if you want any.”

She accepts a bowl, but waits until Yuri has his own. She watches and copies him as he lifts it to face-level, carefully blowing across the surface, and drinks some of the broth. He almost snorts some back up laughing when her eyes go wide, and she visibly tries to swish the hot broth around her mouth to cool it.

“You have to blow like you mean it.”

“I don’t want to spill!”

“Just don’t burn yourself.”

Yuri has a table, because he isn’t a _complete_ disaster. He and Estelle stand around next to the stove anyway, slurping soup directly out of the bowls. When the broth-to-solids ratio declines enough, they break out the spoons.

“You’re a really good cook,” Estelle says, sounding wistful. “I wish I could make stuff like this.”

“Keep in touch with me when you get your feet back under you and maybe I can teach you someday.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“Thank you!”

Once they’ve drained their bowls, Yuri does a lick-and-spit clean-up job on the kitchen while Estelle does a circuit of his living room, snooping through his stuff. He hears her pause over the rush of the tap and doesn’t think anything of it until she ventures to say, “Is... is this Flynn? Flynn Scifo?”

“Probably,” Yuri says. He cranks the faucet off and turns to see what she’s looking at. It’s the picture Coach Niren took of the two of them at their first fencing tournament. Yuri’s still got the last chub of baby fat rounding out his cheeks, and he’s laughing with delight over some stupid shit Flynn had said. Flynn grins back at him, gangly and awkward with adolescence. He has his arm thrown aroun d Yuri’s shoulders.  He looks like a damn puppy; he still needs to grow into his limbs. Yuri would die before he told anybody, but it’s one of his favorite pictures. Flynn was grouchy as shit in high school. Every smile Yuri could wrangle out of him was a privilege. “Yeah, that’s Flynn. You know him?”

“Yes... He’s, um, a student of my guardian’s.”

“Your guardian works at the university, then?”

Estelle fidgets a bit, wringing her hands. “Yes....”

Yuri mentally stores her nervous response for later discussion. He can give her a break at ass o’ clock in the morning. “You and Flynn get on well?”

“Yes! He’s very well-read. We talk about books together.”

“Ah, nerd club. Of course. Sounds just like him.”

“Are you...” Estelle glances over at him. “You know, I didn’t think of it until I saw this picture, but I think he’s mentioned you. Yuri? You’re his best friend, aren’t you?”

Yuri doesn’t answer her for a moment because he’s too startled by the fact that Flynn is, apparently, still calling Yuri his best friend even though they haven’t seen each other in a year and almost got in a fistfight last time they ran into each other. Not that Yuri doesn’t also still consider Flynn his best friend, but, like. Standards, Flynn. Have some. “Huh. Yeah.”

A shy smile spreads over her face. “You’re just like he described you.”

“Oh, geez. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll try to be on my best behavior from here out.”

“What are you talking about? There’s nothing wrong with your behavior.”

Yuri stares at her again. “...I think we’re having two different conversations. How does Flynn describe me? Because I assumed he told you I was a pain in the ass.”

“What? No! He said you’ve got a big heart and you always try to help others.”

This is too much for Yuri to deal with at 2AM in front of a stranger. Or friend of a friend, apparently. Dammit. It’s always Flynn.

“Well, um. He  did also say you were trouble.”

Oh, thank God, stable ground. “That sounds more like it. Come on, I’ll lend you some pajamas. We should both get to sleep. In the morning—like the real morning, not the fake morning right now—we can go back to the community center and talk to Hanks about your options.”

A week later, Estelle is still in his apartment. Yuri thinks she’s starting to grow on him. Not like a fungus, because Estelle is one of the only people he’s ever met that he would wholeheartedly describe as _lovely_. Terribly naive, mind-bogglingly sheltered, but lovely. So maybe like some kind of nice moss or something? He’s lost the trail of this metaphor.

He has bartending in the evening, these days, but when he’s at the community center in the mornings he tries to give her his attention. She seems overwhelmed by all the things she needs to find solutions for: housing, income, banking, emergency medical care... At least a few of those, he can help with. Hanks is a bigger asset. He’s got a lifetime of experience with helping uprooted young adults. Yuri is happy to put Estelle up for as long as it takes them to sort her shit out.

Still, he does sort of wonder if he’s gotten ahead of himself when Hanks texts him asking to talk to him and Estelle in private at his house. Hanks is usually fine with having personal conversations at the community center. Whatever he has to say must be serious.

“Should we have brought him something?” Estelle asks, a little nervously. She’s wearing clothes loaned from one of Yuri’s coworkers with Hanks’s jacket thrown over them. The ol d man refused to take it back from her when they met, and she’s barely taken it off since. She throws herself into hand-me-downs with an eagerness Yuri wouldn’t have expected, given her clothes the night they met.

“What? No. Why would we bring him something?”

“Well, you’re supposed to give your host a gift when you visit someone, aren’t you? Like a bottle of wine?”

“I know you grew up in the fancy rich high society life or some shit, but this is the Lower Quarter, princess. We don’t have the money for that kind of etiquette here. The only ‘wine’ Hanks is getting is the kind that comes out of my mouth.”

Estelle laughs quietly as Yuri knocks on the door and then shoves it open without waiting for a response.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Hanks calls, gruffly. Yuri shepherds Estelle in the right direction. Hanks has his back to them as he puts the finishing touches on a couple bowls of salad.

“Wow, breaking out the fresh vegetables for us and everything.”

“Someone has to make sure you kids get vitamins,” Hanks says, without looking up. He offers one of the bowls to Estelle. She peers into it curiously. “Spinach, bacon, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes. I’ve got salad dressing in the fridge if you want some.”

“Yes, please,” Estelle says. Hanks waves her toward the small kitchen table while he goes to the fridge.

“Both of you have a seat. Estelle, what kind of dressing do you want?”

“Um. I’ll have whatever Yuri’s having.”

“Don’t let Yuri be your role model for everything,” Hanks warns her, even as he passes her the Italian dressing. “He’s a troublemaker.”

“I think he’s nice,” Estelle mumbles.

“You poor, misguided soul,” Yuri says. He takes the bottle from her when she’s done. “Hanks, you needed something from us?”

Hanks eases himself down into a chair across from them, groaning the whole way. The stubborn old man is going to hurt himself one of these days if he doesn’t give in and get a cane. “I did. Well, there’s not really a good way to get into this. Here. Take a look.”

He takes a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and unfolds it, dropping it on the table in front of them. It’s a flyer, the kind small local businesses will have on community boards or that gets slapped up on light posts on the street. It reads:

_MISSING PERSON: ESTELLISE SIDOS HEURASSEIN_

_LAST SEEN AT ZAPHIAS UNIVERSITY, NEAR MEDICAL SCHOOL_

_18 YEARS OLD; 5’5” TALL; PINK HAIR AND GREEN EYES_

_CONTACT ZPD [(XXX) XXX-XXXX] OR DEAN ALEXEI DINOIA [_ [ _dr.a.dinoia@zaphias.edu_ ](mailto:dr.a.dinoia@zaphias.edu) _] WITH INFORMATION. REWARD IF FOUND._

In the middle of the page is a poor-quality, grainy picture of Estelle. It’s water-stained, with the colors distorted so that her face is barely recognizable. Yuri’s not convinced he _would_ recognize her if he didn’t already know who it was. The flyer must have been outside. Along the bottom are tear-off tabs with the police number and the Dean’s email on them. Yuri recognizes the  domain; it’s the official university mail service, so it must be the  Dean’s professional email. It seems like an odd choice for a missing person ad.  Looks like a few tabs have been taken.

Yuri glances sideways at Estelle. She stares down at the flyer, pale and scared like Yuri hasn’t seen her since their first encounter. They just stopped gooping up the scrape, so it’s scabbing over now , and the bruising has turned a sickly green as it heals.

“I...” She swallows, hard, putting her fork down. “I don’t...”

“Listen,” Hanks says, with a sigh. “I’m not about to turn you in. I don’t think Yuri will, either.”

“Fuck, no.”

“But I can’t promise nobody in the Lower Quarter will. Folks here are hurting for cash. Someone who sees you at the community center might take them up on it, even if they aren’t proud of it, so they can put food on the table.”

“...Yes. I understand.”

Hanks scratches at his beard. “I guess all I’m askin’ is that you think about stopping by the police station yourself. I don’t want Yuri to get charged with kidnapping.”

That makes Estelle jerk her head up, eyes wide. “Yuri could get in trouble?”

“Sure. He’s been on the wrong side of the law before—“

“The tweedles deserved to get pushed into the canal, you know that—“

“I do, son, but the police still weren’t none too happy about it. They aren’t much fond of him, and now he’s got a missing person stashed in his apartment. Ain’t a hard case to make.”

“But he’s not making me stay there!”

Hanks shrugs. “They could argue coercion if they get a bee in their bonnet. That’s why I’m suggesting you stop by the police station yourself, to let them know that you left under your own will and you aren’t missing. It doesn’t mean you have to go back to your old life. The community’s happy to help you figure something else out, like we have been.”

Estelle wrings her hands under the table. She looks down at the flyer again.

“I don’t want to go back,” she says, voice small.

“I’m telling you, you don’t have to.”

“If I talk to the police, they’ll make me go back.”

“You’re eighteen,” Yuri says. “You can go wherever the hell you want. They can’t make you go back if you don’t want to.”

“Will you come with me? To the police station?”

“Probably not a good idea,” Hanks says. “Remember, we want to show them that you’re staying in the Lower Quarter under your own free will.”

“I can still drive you there and wait nearby, though,” Yuri says. “I’ll hang out in a parking lot or something. Just scream real loud and I’ll come grab you.”

“Don’t scream unless you have no other choice, the police don’t like that.”

“Who cares what the police like? If they try to mess with you, break their eardrums.”

“Yuri, for God’s sake, don’t get the poor girl in trouble.”

Estelle giggles a little, high and anxious. The smile slides back off her face quickly, though. “I can... can I still stay with you? After I talk to the police?”

“Sure.”

“Really? I promise I’ll—I’ll stop by the bank, and get a new account set up. Then I can try to find a job and pay you b—“

“Estelle, chill. There’s no rush.”

“But—!”

“We’ll get it sorted out. Might take a bit, but we’ll get you there. You don’t need to freak out.”

“I just—“ Estelle sniffles a bit. Oh, God, no. No crying. Please no more crying. Yuri is terrible at comforting people. “You’ve been so kind, both of you, and I haven’t even told you anything and you’re still helping me, and I feel so bad, and—“

Yuri fidgets with a lock of his own hair. “I mean. This isn’t exactly a huge mystery. You’ve got big bruises on your face and you don’t want to go back somewhere. I might not have a fancy education, but I can put two and two together.”

“I... I guess that’s...”

“We don’t really need more information than that. Anyway, you’re a friend of Flynn’s. He would kick my ass if he found out I didn’t look out for you.”

“But you offered to let me stay with you before you knew—“

Hanks reaches across the table to pat her shoulder. “Don’t bother, miss. Let Yuri believe the rest of us think he’s a tough guy. We all know he’s really a big softie.”

Yuri splutters indignantly. “Hey!”

“He climbs trees to get children’s cats down for them,” Hanks stage-whispers to Estelle. She giggles, more genuinely this time. Yuri would be pleased if it weren’t at his goddamn expense.

“ _One_ time! Was I just supposed to leave Ted’s cat stranded?! He had a broken leg!”

“One time? Son, you’ve done that twice in the last year.”

“Tell Ted to get a better cat! I swear, next time I’m leaving the damn thing up there.”

“Yesterday,” Estelle tells Hanks, solemnly, wiping a tear away from the corner of her eye, “He held two babies for a busy mom. At _once_.”

Hanks chortles. Yuri groans, aggrieved. “I changed my mind, you can’t stay with me. You’re a menace.”

“No, no. You’re right, we can’t risk Flynn’s wrath. The young lady is here to stay.”

Estelle catches Yuri’s eye again and gives him that small, shy smile again. Yuri shakes his head, fond despite himself. He returns a wry smile. Of course she’s staying. He never should have expected anything different. On some level, he thinks he didn’t.

“Alright, princess. I guess I’m stuck with you.”

“I’m in your care!”


	2. Chapter 2

Estelle spends a whole morning huddled down in front of Yuri’s clunky old laptop. He doesn’t have internet at his apartment right now, so they bring it over to the community center. Hanks helps her for a while, but soon the morning crowd trickles in, and duty calls him away. Yuri is banned from helping, on the grounds that he has no business advising anyone on how to interact with the police. He wishes he could do _something_ for her, aside from repeatedly confirm that yes, he’ll be a block away the whole time; yes, she can still stay with him afterwards; yes, he will break into the station and whisk her away to safety if the police try any bullshit.

“I thought I told you to get away from her and not give any advice,” Hanks says, smacking Yuri away from Estelle’s side with the soft end of a broom.

“It’s not advice,” Yuri protests. “It’s reassurance.”

"Do n’t you listen to a damn thing that boy tells you,” Hanks tells Estelle, sternly. Estelle smiles nervously at both of them, eyes crinkled up despite the dark bags underneath them. She didn’t sleep much last night, according to Yuri’s creaky old box springs. That or nightmares, the way she was tossing and turning. It doesn’t make a difference which it was, really. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

What she’s doing is reading a lot of advice blogs and mumbling to herself about her rights. Just watching her raises the metaphorical hackles of Yuri’s protective instincts. Hanks has a point, though. The less Yuri is involved, the better. He keeps himself busy in the kitchen for the rest of the morning. At least he can be sure the chicken stock won’t try to coerce Estelle into returning to an abusive household.

After lunch, they pack up Yuri’s laptop and get ready to go. Hanks unexpectedly flags them down before they make it out the door.

“Be careful, you two. Yuri, you’re on your best God damned behavior, you hear me?”

“Sir yes sir,” Yuri says, dryly.

“Young lady, you take this.”

“Huh?” Estelle fumbles with the solid object he drops into her hands. “Your—your phone? But—“

“I turned off the password lock,” Hanks says. “And Yuri’s name is plainly labeled in the contacts. That should stop him getting antsy and bursting in because he thinks it’s taking too long. I imagine it’ll make you feel a smidge better, too.”

“Thanks, Hanks,” Yuri says. He doesn’t have the heart to brush this one off. It really does make him feel a fuck of a lot better to know Estelle will be able to reach him even if she can’t get out of the building.

“Mind you, I want that back, of course,” Hanks says, patting Estelle on the shoulder. She clutches the phone to her chest, wide-eyed.

“Thank you so much...!”

Yuri flippantly salutes Hanks, reaching for the door. “Alright, boss, I’m clocking out for now.”

“No, you aren’t; community escorts are on the clock. Same as it would be if you were taking her to a clinic.  Don’t argue with me, son. You need to pay for that gas somehow. Get a move on.”

“A clinic?” Estelle asks, as Yuri shepherds her out the door and into his car.

“Planned Parenthood, usually,” Yuri says. He turns the key and the car rumbles angrily at him, put out that he continues to expect it to function. He gives the dashboard a consoling pat. “Or other reproductive health clinics. Anywhere you can get an ob-gyn. Family planning services. You get the picture.”

“I think I do.” Estelle endearingly turns with Yuri to check behind the car as they reverse, then pull out of the parking lot. Even his shitty car seems to be a novelty to her sometimes. “You do an awful lot for the community center, don’t you?”

“Mm. Yeah. No more than they’ve done for me, though.” 

There’s a moment of silence where Estelle fidgets with the sleeve cuffs of Hanks’s jacket. Yuri keeps an eye on her in the corner of his vision, but he can’t get a very good look at her expression. He needs to focus on the road. The last thing they need right now is for him to break a traffic law or cause an accident and get pulled over.

“Can... can you keep talking?”

“Sure. Any requests?”

“Ah... tell me a story about you and Flynn?”

Yuri ends up telling her the story of Repede’s blind eye. It’s not too gruesome if he plays it right, and he’s got a bit of practice at that from curious kids at the center. Yuri was her age at the time—God, that was a weird thought—and he’d been new to dog-ownership. Repede broke out of the hovel he and Flynn called an apartment overnight. After hours of searching in the dark, Hanks had hauled them both inside by their ears and forced them to rest. Repede turned up on the doorstep the next morning, face horribly scratched and howling for all his tiny little lungs were worth. Yuri was terrified to so much as wipe him off, in case he made the wound worse. All he could do was bundle Repede up in the cleanest towel he could find. He didn’t have the car yet, so Hanks called them a cab and Flynn, stuttering with panic, had asked to be taken to the vet their Coach used to take Repede and Lambert to.

“So you’ve got these two scruffy, sleep-deprived teenage boys obviously losing our minds while trying to keep a grip on this bloody puppy that was just—I know it sounds wrong, for a dog, but really the only way to describe it is screaming,” Yuri says. He flicks his turn signal on. They’re getting close to the police station. “And the poor receptionist was trying to ask for Repede’s info, but we didn’t know what to tell her, because we hadn’t taken Repede to the vet before—don’t look at me like that, we’d only had him two months or something, it’s not like we skipped out—and all the sudden the vet comes out to see what all the noise is about, and he takes one look at us and he goes, ‘that’s Lambert’s pup.’”

“Lambert?”

“Repede’s dad. He was our fencing coach’s dog. Apparently the vet worked with Coach at ZU back in the day, although we didn’t know that until later. Anyway, he whisked Repede into the back and told us to wait in the lobby, ‘cause it wasn’t going to be pretty. I was flipping my shit, because, you know, we’d only been taking care of Repede for a little while, and the wound looked so bad I had convinced myself he was going to die.”

“Oh, Yuri.”

“I was also running on like two hours of sleep at the time, which may have contributed. Anyway, Flynn had to sit there for like an hour, literally holding my hand, telling me that Repede was going to be fine and everything would be okay. He was freaking out too, but he still babysat me while I lost my min d . It was fucking heroic. And we were covered in blood that whole time. I mean, the receptionist took us to a sink where we could clean up a little bit, but some shit is just there to stay unless you change clothes.”

“Ew.”

“Uh-huh. But after a while the vet popped back out and he was like, ‘your dog is fine, come see him.’ They had knocked him out and stitched him up all pretty. Funny in retrospect—I wish I had a picture. Repede was _boneless_. Puppy puddle.”

“Maybe Flynn has a picture?”

“I don’t think so. We were both too busy being relieved.” Yuri pulls over in front of the police station. Estelle is a rigid line of tension in the passenger seat. “Alright, princess. You’ll just have to get this over with and hurry back out to get the rest of the story.”

Estelle’s lower lip wobbles. “You’ll have your phone on the whole time?”

“Max volume. Texts _and_ calls.”

“And I don’t have to go back. I can—I can still stay with you.”

“Long as you need.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“You’re gonna be A-okay,” Yuri says, firmly, “Just like Repede was. Look, you’ve got the beat-up face and everything. You have to be okay. It’s just cinematic parallels at this point.”

Estelle smiles, even though it doesn’t reach her eyes, as she clicks open the car door. “Where are you going to be parked?”

“You see over at that corner?” Yuri points down the block, through the windshield. “I’ll be at that convenience store. I’ll go in and buy a snack at some point so they can’t boot me out, since I’m a paying customer.”

“I’ll come find you when I’m done.”

“Sure thing.” Yuri holds his hand up to her. She stares at it blankly. “What? Come on. High five for good luck.”

Estelle slowly presses her palm against his and holds it there for a beat, looking at him dubiously. Yuri snorts.

“Okay, we’ll work on that one later.”

“Is this not—?”

“Nope, nuh-uh, this is a problem for post-police Estelle. Out you get.”

She puts Hanks’s phone into her pocket and slides out of the car. She gives Yuri another halfhearted smile as she closes the door, mouthing _bye_ through the window. _See you_ , Yuri mouths back. He doesn’t pull away from the curb until she’s all the way inside. When he does, he’s muttering curses under his breath.

Da mmit. She’s going to be _fine_. Cinematic parallels. Estelle is a smart cookie, and she spent all morning preparing. She has Hanks’s phone. She’s a legal adult.

Yuri wishes he had brought Repede along. But there was a toddler read-along today at the community center, and Repede likes to lounge on the carpet between all the kids, soaking up their attention while he naps. It’s not like there’s anyplace close to the station where Yuri could be exercising with him, which is the only way he could justify it. If Repede isn’t getting a workout either way, he might as well do the one he likes better. Yuri’s the human here. He can suck it up.

He pulls into the lot of the convenience store and cranks the parking brake into place with more force than necessary. His forehead thuds against the top of the steering wheel, well away from the horn. Maybe he shouldn’t have told Estelle a Flynn story. Now he just fucking misses Flynn. He always does, has for the last few years, but now it’s sharp and immediate. He misses knowing that Flynn could take Repede out between classes when Yuri was too busy. He misses having his best friend there to tell him shit’s going to be alright. He misses Flynn being able to cheer him up just by being there, misses Flynn helping him do school shit even if it was too simple for him when it was stupidly hard for Yuri.

The problem is that it’s so _easy_ to talk to Estelle about Flynn. Everybody at the community center drives him up the freaking wall treading on eggshells about it. They’re always watching him when Flynn comes up in conversation, waiting for him to snap and get mad. They only know scattered fragments of why Yuri and Flynn aren’t the same unit they used to be, but they know enough to be wary of bringing it up. Estelle, though. Estelle doesn’t know any of it. It’s bizarre to Yuri. They nearly physically fought the last time they saw each other, and Flynn told Estelle that Yuri is his best friend. Estelle will go, _one time Flynn_ —and Yuri can go, _yeah, that’s Flynn alright, did he tell you about this other time?_ And there’s no secret second conversation about whether Yuri’s about to go completely unhinged. It makes him run his mouth more than he should. He didn’t even tell Hanks that Flynn held his hand in the vet lobby while Repede had surgery. He doesn’t think anybody but Raven knows about that, if Raven even remembers.

If he doesn’t get a grip, Estelle is going to figure out a lot more about how he feels about Flynn than he wants her to. She’s not an idiot. Worse, she’s a romantic. She’ll connect the dots.

...Now he’s worrying about Estelle and missing Flynn _and_ kicking himself over his shitty feelings again. Great. Fantastic. This afternoon is going just swell.

Yuri lets himself out of the damn car and goes into the convenience store to buy chocolate or something. He needs it.

Yuri is used to his friends just opening the door and hopping back in the car, so when Estelle taps on the window, he jumps about a foot in the air and almost hits his head.

“Sorry,” Estelle says, cracking the door open to peer in at him. “Can I—?”

“Yeah, get in,” Yuri says. She climbs into her seat and draws her knees up so she can wrap her arms around them, and takes a deep, shuddering breath. Yuri watches her for a moment, then reaches past her to get into the glove compartment. “Hey. Here. Got you something.”

“Huh?” Estelle sniffles a little. Her eyes go big when she sees what Yuri is offering her. “Oh, you didn’t have to—“

“It’s convenience store chocolate,” Yuri says. He pokes her in the arm with it until she frees a hand to take it from him. “Not exactly a crazy luxury gift. I got the receipt if you want a different flavor, though.”

“No, this is good,” Estelle mumbles. She unwraps it, sniffling some more. “’M—‘m sorry. I know c-crying makes you uncomfortable.”

“That’s my problem. You worry about yourself.” Yuri crosses his arms, leaning back in his seat to watch her. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Th-they wanted me to go back.” She scrubs at her eyes. “I knew they would. It’s okay. I expected it. You were right, they couldn’t force me to do anything because I’m eighteen.”

“Still shitty, though.”

“Y-yeah.”

“They give you any other problems?”

“I had to argue with them about n-not telling my guardian where I was staying. But they said they would officially delist me as missing. That’s what—what matters.”

Yuri nods, slowly. “You just tell me if there’s anyone I should be running off the property if I catch them near the apartment, alright?”

“Ah. Okay.” She nibbles at the chocolate. “...Will you, um, tell me the rest of the story about Repede?”

“Sure. Lemme pull out first.” When they’re both seat-belted and Yuri has managed to exit the parking lot without running anyone over, he drums his fingers against the steering wheel. “Where was I?”

“P-puppy puddle.”

Yuri huffs out a laugh. “That’s right. Poor Repede. Raven—that’s our vet—he gave us a bunch of antibiotics to give Repede, and talked us through what to expect during Repede’s recovery until he woke up. Once he was conscious they got the cone of shame on him. Only time he’s ever needed one, while we had him. Think he had one when he got fixed, too, but that was before we took him in.”

Estelle giggles wetly. “P-poor thing. Borzoi pups are all—all skinny, aren’t they? He must’ve been falling over with the heavy cone on his head.”

“God, you would think so, but Repede was a _big_ boy when he was a puppy. Solid chunk of dog. He was like that even when Coach had him, so it wasn’t our fault for overfeeding him or anything . Probably the German Shepherd blood. They’re a little thicker than Borzoi pups. I definitely do have pictures of puppy Repede, I’ll find them for you when I get home from work tonight.” Yuri sifts through the memories and snorts fondly. “ Didn’t help much with the cone, though. I don’t think losing one of his eyes was doing him any favors either. The first few nights after the surgery were terrible. He would wake up and try to get some kibble or water, and he’d knock over damn near everything in the apartment, so of course that would wake us up, too. Even if we managed to sleep through that, he would get frustrated and start crying. ”

“But you were already so tired!”

“Like I said, rough couple of nights. We ended up having to coordinate a schedule of who got up to deal with it at what times on what nights. Hanks kept telling us it was a practice run for having kids someday.”

Estelle cocks her head, more alert. “Kids? For you two, together? Flynn didn’t tell me—”

“No.” Yuri grips the steering wheel tighter and prays his cheeks aren’t red. “No, not together. Just in general. It was a bad joke either way—I’d make a crummy  dad .”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“You’re very nice to say so, but you’re also very wrong.”

Estelle gives him a thoughtful look. Yuri hurries on with the story.

“Anyway, giving him the antibiotics was probably the worst part. Raven gave them to us in a syringe at first, to squirt into his mouth, but Repede would lose his mind when we tried to open his mouth to give it to him. It was hard to hold his head still without aggravating the wound. So we tried switching to pill form and mixing them into his food, but the little brat would just pick them out and we’d find a little pile of them in his empty bowl after he ate.”

“What did you do?”

Yuri grins nostalgically. “Wrapped ‘em in bits of deli turkey.”

“Yuri!”

“Yeah, Flynn yelled at me too. He damn near killed me the first time I did it. Still, it was the only thing that worked, and we were too exhausted to fight over it. Repede would be so excited to eat the turkey, he wouldn’t realize there was a pill until it was too late. Flynn did get to say ‘I told you so’ a lot afterwards, though, because I’ve never been able to keep deli turkey in the house since. Repede is convinced it’s for him.”

“Can’t you just keep it away from him?”

“Nope. He’s a dog on a mission.”

Estelle smiles, small but real. Some of the tension has left her posture. Good.

“That whole ordeal is probably why Repede hates the vet, now, anyway,” Yuri says. He mentally plots their route back to the community center. He should have enough time before bartending to drop Estelle off and take Repede for a run.

“Maybe if you switched vets...?”

“Nah—I don’t think it’s just Raven, since he’s not very happy to see any of the vet techs, either. I guess it could be the location itself. Best vet within a convenient distance, though—if you ever meet Raven, don’t tell him I said that, okay? He’d be fucking insufferable about it.  But he did us... a lot of favors, back then. Had to guide me through a lot of stupid first-time dog-owner stuff. Least I can do is give him my business.”

Estelle’s been looking out the passenger-side window, but now her head lolls against the headrest to face Yuri. “Hey, Yuri?”

“Hm?”

“Why do you talk about Repede like he was yours and Flynn’s when he was a puppy, but just yours now?”

“...Flynn’s pretty busy with school these days.” Too busy to be wasting time on some stupid drop-out. “I’ve got more free time, so I took Repede. He hasn’t seen Flynn in a long time. I don’t know if he would remember Flynn now.”

“You don’t have very much free time at all, though.”

Yuri cocks a smile with as much conviction as he can muster. “Yeah, because I’ve filled it all with Repede. It doesn’t really look like free time any more. It just looks like Repede time.”

Estelle is quiet for a moment. Just when Yuri starts to hope that she’ll drop it, she says, “You miss him.”

Yuri brakes maybe a little too sharply at a stop sign. Their seatbelts snap taught. Estelle yelps.

“Sorry,” Yuri mutters. “Noticed the sign a little late. Miss who, Repede? It’s true, I do miss Repede when I have to leave him for more than five minutes— ”

“Flynn. You miss Flynn,  don’t you?”

Yuri tries to fast forward through all the  different ways this conversation could play out in his head. What’s the answer least likely to swamp him with a  discussion of his feelings and his current relationship with Flynn? If he tries to say no, Estelle might tell him why she thought he  did, and he doesn’t want to deal with that kind of self-awareness. The truth is probably safer. “...Yeah.”

“Why  don’t you call him?”

“He got a new number at some point since I last saw him in person.”

“Wh—oh.” Estelle frowns a bit. “I think I remember when that happened. He didn’t give you the new number?”

“Nope. Probably  didn’t have mine memorized, or something.” Or he just figured it was as good an excuse as any to move on to better social circles, and leave the squalor of his past behind. That’s what Yuri’s been betting on.

At least, it was until Estelle showe d up and started saying weird shit about how Flynn still talks about him.

“I could give you his new number!”

Somehow, that catches Yuri completely off guard. He glances over at her. “You have his number memorized? Wow, princess. I didn’t realize you were _that_ into him.”

“I’m—“ Estelle splutters at him, red-faced. Yuri grins despite himself as he turns back to the road. “I am _not!_ It’s not like that! I forgot I didn’t have my phone—”

“Uh-huh. I’ll start working on my speech for your wedding.”

“Yuri! I don’t like him that way! And that’s not even—Flynn doesn’t even _like_ g _—“_

_Girls_. Estelle slaps a hand over her own mouth before the rest of the word can slip out. She looks at Yuri, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked. Yuri considers messing with her some more, but decides to have some pity.

“Relax. I already knew Flynn was gay. I’m just screwing around.”

“Oh, good,” Estelle breathes, slumping back in her seat.

“Anyway, speaking of your phone, maybe we should figure out a plan to rescue some of your shit.”

Estelle wrings her hands. “...I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a good way to get into my old home without having to talk to...”

“ Don’t  you worry,” Yuri says, cheerfully. He was just trying to find a way to divert the conversation away from Flynn, but he’s quickly warming to the idea. He  doesn’t have bartending _too_ late tonight. “I’ll take care of that. Just wait and see. You didn’t have any plans for tonight, did you?”

“This is illegal!” Estelle hisses. Yuri, halfway through the action of pulling himself over a brick wall, gives her an incredulous look. She’s been trying to dissuade him since they came within a few blocks of the property. Apparently Estelle _is_ willing to stand up when people try to steamroll past her. She just picks her battles.

“How? I’m pretty sure you technically still live here, legally.”

“It’s still breaking and entering! And _theft!_ ”

“Oh, wah wah wah. It’s not like we’re really stealing. It’s all your stuff.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works!”

Yuri snorts and pulls himself the rest of the way up, perched on the top. “Are you coming, or do you want to wait here?”

“I—I don’t want to start my new life with a criminal record!”

“So wait.”

“Yuri!”

“Relax, I’ve got this under control. Which floor is your room on?”

Estelle makes a high-pitched sound of aggravation and tries to scramble up the wall after him. She almost topples back down halfway up, and Yuri has to reach down to haul her up by the collar of Hanks’s jacket. The jitters probably aren’t doing her coordination any favors.

“What happened to not wanting a criminal record?”

“If I come with you so you know where to go, everything will be faster, and we can be done and leave sooner.”

“You can tell me where to go from here, you don’t have to be involved.”

Estelle gives him a sulky, anxious look. “I don’t want to—to just wait alone in the dark. What if someone comes by?”

“Hide in a bush.”

“Flynn and Hanks were right, you _are_ a troublemaker.”

“I can’t tell you how flattered and alarmed I am that it’s taken you like a week and a half to figure that out.”

Yuri did sort of count on Estelle staying behind, although he gets why she doesn’t want to now that she mentions it. There’s no car in the driveway right now. What if her guardian comes back while Yuri is inside? Still, now he has to factor her into his entry and exit strategy.  Damn. He should have just made her give him an address, left her at home and winged it from there.

“Okay,” Yuri mutters. He swings his legs over the other side of the wall and starts his descent. “Just... do what I do, alright? I’ll try not to do anything too crazy. Lemme know if you can’t keep up and I’ll figure something else out.”

“A-alright.” Estelle tentatively lowers her leg over the edge of the wall, searching for the uneven bricks Yuri used to get down. Yuri hops down the last few feet and gets under her, spotting her in case of a fall. It seems to help with the mental side of things, at least. Estelle stops trembling so much and plants her feet more confidently. Yuri whisks her off the wall when she gets as far down as he jumped from.

“I don’t suppose you know whether there’s any security cameras?”

“Ah—yes, but—but we’ll be able to see them, there’s a little light when they’re on.”

“You sure they’re not motion-activated?”

“Y...yes?”

Well, there’s only one way to figure out for sure.

They creep around the perimeter of the property. Estelle murmurs directions and notes about the layout of the property. Here’s the garden; there’s the shed, but that definitely has a security camera, so don’t go that way. The greenhouse doesn’t have a camera, but it’s locked. Estelle thinks it will be, anyway, and Yuri’s not going to stick his fingerprints on every random surface just for funsies. Back door to the kitchen is a no go, too. There’s a chance the housekeeper might be around. Obviously they’re not going through the front door.

“I...” Estelle looks at him sideways, wringing her hands. They’re crouched in the shadows of the small orchard on the far side of the house. “I never locked my balcony door? But it’s on the second floor. There’s a tree, but no branches until higher up—I don’t know if it’s...”

“Oh, princess,” Yuri says. “Have some faith. I will _make_ it climbable.”

“M-maybe for _you!_ ”

But she still helps guide Yuri back around the house and points out the window. It’s dark, which isn’t surprising. Estelle hasn’t been in her room for at least a week and a half. They’re too close to the ground floor windows now to risk talking, even whispering, so Yuri just pats her on the back and hoists himself up on the nearest decorative garden statue. From the top, he leaps to grab a tree branch hanging ten feet off the ground. It’s a solid jump, there’s no getting around it. Estelle’s wide eyes gleam in the moonlight as she clambers up the statue after him. Yuri hastily climbs up to straddle the branch. If she gets a bad grip, he’s going to want to be stable enough to catch her.

She wobbles at the top of the statue and casts a fretful look at Yuri. Yuri’s not feeling so hot about this himself, really, but at this point all he can do is flash her a thumbs-up and lean forward, body pressed to the branch to extend his reach below it.

She jumps.

The tree shu dders violently. Estelle gasps. Yuri hisses through his teeth, straining to keep his grip on Estelle’s free hand. She managed to get one hand onto the branch, at least, but she’s scrabbling not to lose her hold. The longer this goes on, the less likely someone inside will be willing to write it off as a bird or a raccoon or something—honestly, though, with her fingertips sliding over bark, it seems more likely that she’ll plummet to the ground and break something.

But right as Yuri starts to seriously consider freaking out, she grits her teeth, stretches up with Yuri’s help to get a second hand on the branch, and somehow, somehow works her way up to sit beside him. It’s fucking impressive. Yuri didn’t know she had that kind of arm strength. She really is a determined little monster when she puts her mind to it.

From there, it’s not easy, but it’s easier. The tree is good for climbing once you’re on it. Estelle shadows Yuri’s footwork, even with her second-hand sneakers slipping where the traction has worn down. Yuri helps her swing out of the branches and onto the balcony. He reaches for the door. Estelle catches his wrist, shaking her head, and opens it herself.

Of course. Estelle leaving fingerprints won’t alarm anybody if someone investigates the break-in. Yuri should have thought of that.

Estelle’s room is cast in odd angles of shadow, but Yuri can still tell that it’s exactly as frilly as he expected. Gauzy pink drapes surround the bed. The sheets gleam like satin. The moonlight makes the carpet look snow-white. It’s horrifyingly clean, too. Yuri has never seen a carpet that looked less walked-upon than this one. For fuck’s sake, did they steam-press her carpet the second she left the house, or does it always look like this?

He glances at Estelle. She stares at the room like she’s never seen it before.

No, wait. She doesn’t look like she’s seeing it at all. _Shit_. Yuri didn’t think this through. He should have been ready for the chance that coming back here would make Estelle dissociate.

“Estelle,” Yuri hisses, as quietly as he possibly can. It’s rough. He’s not built for low volumes. He touches her elbow. “Estelle, stick with me.”

Estelle looks down at his hand, blinking sightlessly. Yuri jostles her a bit. That snaps her out of it. She shakes herself out, jaw clenching. Yuri passes her one of the drawstring backpacks he brought with him.

“What do I grab?” she whispers.

“Whatever you want.”

“But...”

“Irreplaceable family shit. Books. Any clothes you really like.” He holds up the other bag. “Just point me to what you want and I’ll grab it for you.”

Estelle’s face falls. “I can’t fit all of my books.”

“That’s what the library is for, princess.”

“I don’t have a library card.”

“I have some _great_ news for you about public libraries, but we’ll save that for later. Come on, let’s hurry up.”

Estelle’s wardrobe is baffling to Yuri. Almost everything in it is nicer than the value of all of his clothes put together. To get to the clothes she wants, she has to shove aside a whole row of hangers with fancy dresses on them. Thank God she doesn’t seem to want to take those ones with her. She points him to her bookshelf, whispering, “As many as possible!” and tiptoes off toward an ensuite bathroom. The floor doesn’t creak a peep. Yuri’s not sure he’s ever been in a room where it was possible to move this quietly.

He gives Estelle’s personal library his full consideration, which is to say he stares at each title for about two seconds and tries to picture it in the Lower Quarter’s public library. If he can’t, he grabs it. Most of the fiction gets left behind this way, but he figures Estelle will forgive him once they get her a library card. It’s gonna be awkward if she’s no longer interested in hardcover nonfiction novels about the history of European mythology or what the fuck ever, though.

Estelle emerges from the bathroom again, clutching her bag to her chest. On her way back to Yuri, she stoops to retrieve a pair of sneakers from under the bed. They’re fucking pristine. Yuri has seen shoes in shoe commercials that looked more used. She peers at what’s left on the bookshelf. Yuri allows her to double-check his work with as much patience as he can muster, but it’s not long before he nudges her insistently again. She huffs but obliges, crossing over to her desk. She retrieves several notebooks, then hesitates. Yuri peeks around her. Her hand hovers over her phone.

“It’s your call,” he says. “But I wouldn’t put money on that not being tracked.”

“I know,” Estelle says, miserably. She reaches down to turn it on and Yuri winces away from the sudden illumination of the screen. “Oh, no... I knew everyone might worry, but this is...”

“Maybe they’ll figure it out when the posters go down.” Or they’ll think she was found dead in a ditch, but Yuri probably shouldn’t say that to Estelle. Oh, hell, maybe _Flynn_ thinks she’s dead in a ditch. Yuri is intimately acquainted with how badly Flynn copes with grief. Maybe they should be looking into secret, safe venues of contact. It won’t be from Estelle’s old phone, though, because she gives it one last wistful caress and leaves it on the desk.

Somehow, Yuri gets them both back out the window, down the tree and off the property without making too much of a ruckus. They sprint back to the edge of campus where Yuri left his car. For a few minutes, Estelle is too busy wheezing to say anything, and Yuri is more than happy to drive them through quiet streets bathed in yellow lamplight in silence. He likes the cover of night. It feels safe. He appreciates that, after the luxuriousness of Estelle’s house up close showed him that he was in way, way deeper than he’d thought.

“Oh, drat,” Estelle says, abruptly. Yuri side-eyes her.

“What now?”

“I ought to have at least gotten my contacts out of my old phone. I wanted to get Flynn’s number for you.”

“Christ’s sake, Estelle. Don’t do that to me. I thought we needed to go back for something important.”

“No! No. That was—this is enough. More than enough. You shouldn’t have—and I mean you really, actually shouldn’t have. I can’t believe you made me into a _criminal!_ ”

“I don’t see how it’s breaking and entering and stealing if I escort a lady back into her old house to pick up her own shit,” Yuri says, rolling his eyes. He does, in a clean-cut legal way, but it’s a stupid case to make in the first place. Everything they took was Estelle’s. Honestly, none of it seems to be worth much by itself. With a little luck, Estelle’s guardian or whoever won’t even notice that anything is missing until it’s way too late.

“It was extremely illegal!”

Yuri  drops his voice several octaves to drone, blandly, “Your honor, the defendant is responsible for the theft of her own fucking notebooks, which have absolutely no commercial value and are basically useless to literally anyone else.”

Estelle laughs, once, sharp like she can’t help herself. She pushes at Yuri’s shoulder with almost no real force. “You’re awful.”

“Hey, no hitting the driver.”

“You didn’t even flinch!”

“I let you hit me, someday you’ll do it while Ted’s watching, suddenly Ted thinks he’s allowed to hit me and then we’ll all die in a fiery car crash.”

“You’re absurd.”

Yuri snorts. “You sound like Flynn.”

“I probably sound like everybody who knows you!”

“Absurd? Nah, that one’s all Flynn. Most people stick with ‘dumbass.’”

“Well,” Estelle says, primly, “I can’t imagine why.”

“Ouch,” Yuri laughs. He pulls into his apartment’s parking lot. “Right in the heart. I don’t know if I’ll ever recover.”

They’re still sniping at each other when they exit the car and head inside. The banter keeps up all the way to Yuri’s  door, but Estelle is definitely sagging before they’re halfway up the stairs. She drags her feet on her way across the threshold, dropping her bag of rescued possessions on the couch before she collapses in a pile on the floor, next to Repede. Repede lifts his head enough to sniff at her suspiciously. When she offers her hand, he licks it, then unexpectedly leans over to lick her on the nose. Estelle half-laughs, half-yelps.

“Yuck! Repede!”

“Aw,” Yuri says. He kicks off his shoes and leaves the bag of Estelle’s books with her other shit before throwing himself down next to her and Repede. Repede quickly turns to plop his head into Yuri’s lap, tail wagging. Yuri strokes his back. “You’re getting used to her, aren’t you, bud?”

“He’s a good boy,” Estelle says. She pats Repede’s belly. He huffs a little, but allows it. “Repede, Yuri told me all about what a brave puppy you were today.”

She traces her fingers across his muzzle to touch the scarred side of his face. He doesn’t react much—he never has, not since it finished healing.

“I wish I was as brave as you,” Estelle whispers.

“I told you,” Yuri says, uncomfortably. “Cinematic parallels. You pulled through, just like him. I didn’t even have to force-feed you your antibiotics.” To Repede, he adds, dryly, “Unlike _someone_.”

Repede, who is a dog and has no clue Yuri is shit-talking him, yawns widely.

“I wish I could be strong,” Estelle mumbles. Her eyelids are drooping. Her whole body is drooping, actually. She wobbles unsteadily, even sitting down. “I wish I could... could go back and talk to my friends and not be so scared. That I could just knock on the door and ask to pick up my things. I’m such a baby.”

“Estelle,” Yuri says, around the lump in his throat. He reaches out and catches her by the shoulders as she sways forward, then eases her down so her head rests on Repede’s side. She sniffles a bit. “Being afraid of an abuser doesn’t make you a baby. Sometimes running away is the brave thing to do.”

“It’s not like he hit me that often.” Her fingers curl into Repede’s fur. He whuffles anxiously. Yuri strokes his head, trying to give Repede the comfort he wishes he knew how to give Estelle. “I should have stayed. I overreacted. I’m so _stupid_. And now I’m causing you trouble, and...”

“Estelle, c’mon.”

“It’s not _fair_.”

“No,” Yuri says. He rubs her back. “It’s not. But it’s not your fault.”

“I should have...”

“You should get some sleep is what you should do,” Yuri says. He heaves himself to his feet, then crouches again to scoop Estelle into his arms. She buries her face against his shoulder as he lifts her. Shit, she’s heavier than she looks. He grunts with the effort. “Okay, princess? Let’s get you to bed. In the morning we’ll eat a good breakfast and go talk to Hanks, and you’ll feel better. It’s gonna be alright.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

He carries her to the bedroom and dumps her on the bed. She clings to his shirt when he tries to pull away.

“I d-don’t want to be alone—”

“Okay,” Yuri says. “Then let’s get you into some pajamas, and I can sleep on the floor in here for tonight.”

“I’m s-sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. I took you someplace that was shitty for you tonight. Of course you’re upset.”

Estelle changes while he brushes his teeth. Once he’s got on his own soft sleep shirt and old shorts, he flops down in a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor. Repede curls up behind his knees.

“Thank you, Yuri,” Estelle mumbles, from under the comforter.

“It’s no problem. Wake me up if you need anything, alright? Anything at all.”

“...Okay.”

Yuri wakes up to smoke.

“The fuck?” he croaks. Repede sticks his head in through the open bedroom door, whining quietly. Yuri kicks his way out of the blanket cocoon he’s tangled in and staggers into the kitchen.

Ah. Estelle.

“I’m sorry,” she starts, wide-eyed and near to tears in front of a blackened skillet of what possibly used to be eggs. “I just wanted to—“

“Windows first, apologies later,” Yuri says. He yanks open the living room window, then grabs a magazine off the coffee table to wave uselessly through the smoke. Estelle coughs. “Damn. I forgot to change the batteries in the smoke detector.”

“A-are we going to—?”

“It’s fine, we’re fine. Go open the window in the bedroom, will you?”

Estelle hurries to obey while Yuri opens the kitchen window. The smoke isn’t as bad as it could be, given the apparent death of the detector. Seems like it’s already clearing out a bit. He picks up the spatula Estelle abandoned to prod at the lump of charcoal in his skillet.

“I wanted to make breakfast,” Estelle says, miserably, from somewhere behind him. “To thank you. But I messed it up.”

“Of course you did,” Yuri says. He scrapes at the skillet a little. It spreads charcoal around. “You haven’t ever cooked before, have you?”

“No...”

“You should have gotten me up. I could teach you.”

“But it wouldn’t be thanking you if I made you work more!”

“Yet here we are,” Yuri says. “Besides, I don’t need to be _thanked_ , Christ. Open the trash for me.”

Estelle dutifully opens the cupboard the trash bin is stashed inside. Yuri pushes the less stubborn bits of charcoal into the bin, kicks the cupboard closed, then dumps the pan into the sink to soak.

“You do need to be thanked,” Estelle says. Yuri gives her an exasperated look over his shoulder; when he opens his mouth, she adds, hurriedly, “I _want_ to thank you.”

“Well stop it,” Yuri grumbles. He goes into the cupboard for a new pan. At least the smoke is clearing out relatively fast. “Are there still eggs?”

“Y-yeah?”

“Alright. We’re going to give the smoke another minute to disperse, and in the meantime you can get a small bowl down for me and take the eggs back out.”

Yuri fucks off to find batteries. When he returns to the kitchen, Estelle is waiting anxiously with a small bowl and the egg carton. The air is only faintly smokey. Yuri grabs a chair and shoves it under the smoke detector.

“Crack the eggs into the bowl,” he says, as he clicks the cover off. “I’ll watch from here.”

“How many eggs?”

“Four.”

“You eat four eggs at once?”

“What are _you_ going to have for breakfast?”

Estelle gives him a baffled look, like it hadn’t even occurred to her that she could make her own breakfast too. “I—I guess eggs?”

“If we have four eggs left, do four. If we don’t, I’ll just split whatever we have with you. We’ve got bread. We can have toast or something too.” Yuri sighs as he slides the new batteries into place. “I guess we need to go to the store. Shit.”

“I only used two eggs before,” Estelle blurts out. “We’ve still got five eggs.”

“Yeah, but I was gonna make shakshuka tomorrow.” Yuri puts the cover back on the smoke detector. Estelle finally, hesitantly removes an egg from the carton. She taps it lightly against the side of the bowl.

“Harder than that.”

“I’ll get egg everywhere!”

“You won’t.” Yuri climbs down from the chair. “You need a clean break to pull it apart, or you’ll get bits of shell in everything. Here, I’ll show you one.”

Yuri dumps the dead batteries into the garbage along with the still-faintly-smoking wreckage of the burnt eggs, then washes his hands. Estelle watches raptly as he plucks an egg out of the carton and snaps it against the edge of the bowl before pulling it cleanly apart.

“Like that. Now you—yeah, okay, that was a lot better. Now the next two.”

Estelle furrows her brow and does as instructed. She still gets a piece of eggshell in the mix, but nothing Yuri can’t fish out with his fingers. “Why are we using a bowl? Can’t it just go straight in the pan?”

“It can if you know what you’re doing.” Yuri shrugs, leaning his hip against the counter as he monitors Estelle’s dismemberment of the final egg. “For a beginner, though, it’s easier to make sure all of the eggs will go in the pan at the same time. Are we doing sunny-side up, or scrambled?”

“Uh—scrambled?”

“Okay. Let’s both wash the raw egg off our hands, then you’re gonna get the milk out.” Yuri towels off his own hands as Estelle opens the fridge, then reaches into the silverware drawer for a fork. “Just dump in a little bit.”

“How much?”

“A little bit. Like I said.”

“That’s not very specific.”

“Well, I just eyeball it. Here, I’ll do it the first time so you can see. Just—this much, about. A glug.”

“A glug,” Estelle echoes, side-eyeing him dubiously.

“A very precise measurement,” Yuri says. He flashes her a grin and hands the milk back. “Put this away.”

Salt and pepper to taste and whisking the yolks into the whites, at least, Estelle seems comfortable with. While she does that, he dumps some cooking oil into the new pan and turns on the heat.

“You’re a good teacher,” Estelle tells him, as she carefully pours the beaten eggs into the skillet. “You should teach classes.”

Yuri snorts. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I don’t have the patience for teaching as a job.”

“But you do!”

“I’ve taught stuff for the community center occasionally. I know I’m not cut out to do it full-time. You’re an angel of a student compared to most people, princess.”

Estelle tries not to visibly preen at the praise and mostly fails. Yuri laughs. “Here, grab the spatula. What you want to do now is—“

“You could’ve gotten her in a lot of trouble.”

“I told her she could stay behind.”

“Yuri.”

Yuri sighs. Estelle is on the other side of the community center, helping some of the kids with their homework. Yuri has to leave for the bar in ten minutes, and he was starting to think he might escape without the lecture, but no such luck. “Hanks.”

“Boy, what am I going to do with you?” Hanks sighs too, leaning back in his chair. “I thought you would have grown out of this by now.”

“Sorry,” Yuri says, snippy and insincere. “Really shitty of me to want her to have some of her own stuff that she likes again.”

“You _know_ that’s not what the issue is, son.” Hanks rubs his temples. “You’re too impulsive. What if you had been caught? Forget Estellise. What do you think would have happened if someone had caught _you?_ ”

Yuri shrugs. “Nothing good.”

“And you still did it?”

“It was a calculated risk.”

“Your damn calculations are off.” Hanks scrubs a hand through his beard and fixes Yuri with a tired look. “I wish your old coach was still here. You were always better behaved for him.”

Yuri’s stomach drops. Hanks seems to realize his mistake as soon as he makes it, hastily opening his mouth again, but it’s too late for that now. Yuri is already shoving his chair back, the legs screeching on the floor. Estelle looks up from the other side of the room; Yuri sees her in his periphery before he turns to the door.

“Yuri?”

“I’m going to work,” Yuri gets out, through gritted teeth.

“Yuri, come on—“ Hanks tries. Yuri strides away without looking back. He shoves his way out the community center’s doors. There’s a quick patter of footsteps behind him, but it’s not Hanks’s gait, so Yuri forces himself not to lash out when someone catches him by the arm before he can get in his car. Estelle blinks up at him with her big green eyes.

“I thought you had a few more minutes.”

“I’m leaving early.”

She chews on her lower lip. A little guiltily, she admits, “I told the children you would do a knife trick for them if they finished their homework.”

Against all odds, that punches a short bark of laughter out of Yuri. He feels a little of the tension go with it, but the damn ache in his chest doesn’t go anywhere. “They’ll have to do their homework tomorrow, too, then. Tell them I’ll do two knife tricks to make up for it.”

Estelle beams at him. Her hand is still resting gently on his arm.

“Are you...” The smile slides off her face. “Are you upset? When you left, it seemed like...”

“It has nothing to do with you,” Yuri says, too sharply. Estelle’s face falls further. God dammit. Estelle is the last person who deserves Yuri’s ire. Trying to speak more softly, he adds, “Hanks chewed me out and I got mad because I’m secretly twelve. That’s all.”

“It didn’t look like you were mad about being lectured,” Estelle presses. Yuri swallows down a bitter sigh. He doesn’t want to talk about Coach in the middle of the community center’s parking lot when he has to drive to work in five minutes. He doesn’t want to talk about Coach at all, really. Estelle has enough baggage of her own without trying to unpack Yuri’s.

“I don’t really want to get into it right now.”

Estelle still looks a little hurt, but she nods. Her hand drops from Yuri’s arm as she steps back.

“Hang on.” Yuri digs into his pocket and fiddles with his keyring, then holds a fist out to Estelle. “Here. Gimme your hand.”

Estelle complies, her wounded expression melting into curiosity. Yuri presses a set of keys into her open palm.

“Take these. You can just go straight back to the apartment instead of having to wait for me to finish up at the bar.”

Estelle stands up a little straighter, with her mouth a little _o_ of shock. “Are you sure? Is that really okay?”

“Sure. What’re you gonna do, rob me?”

“Well, I—I could! Hypothetically!”

Yuri rolls his eyes. “Right. Just take Repede for a long walk in the evening before you steal all of my shit, then. And I’m gonna need you to let me in or leave the door unlocked when I get home.”

“Okay!” Before Yuri can do much except fight down the reflex to throw her across the parking lot, Estelle launches herself forward to wrap Yuri in a hug. Yuri grunts in surprise, arms trapped. “Thank you so much!”

“It’s your apartment too, for now,” Yuri says. He manages to wriggle a hand free to pat her on the head. “We’ll get a second key tomorrow or something. I’ll see you tonight.”

“See you!”

Yuri waves as he drives off. It’s—an odd feeling, almost distracting enough that he stops feeling so nauseated. He’s taken on down-on-their-luck guests before, but he’s never given them his fucking keys.

Well. That’s the power of Estelle, he guesses.


End file.
